The Hindu : National : 70 scientists to review Chandrayaan-1 data
70 scientists to review Chandrayaan-1 data
Aloysius Xavier Lopez
Project Director says may lead to new, interesting findings
CHENNAI: Around 70 scientists including those from other countries will participate in the
first meeting to review scientific findings from the data acquired from each instrument of the Chandrayaan-1 project at Bangalore on January 29.
Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a brainstorming session with schoolchildren at Chennai on Monday, Project Director Mayilsamy Annadurai said, “We expect something new about the moon to emerge during the first meeting of scientists associated with all the 11 instruments of Chandrayaan-1.”
One of the instruments of Chandrayaan-1, MiniSAR, has the
objective of detecting water ice in regions on the lunar surface not yet studied.
“We see something unique and if during the meeting in Bangalore the scientific findings provide a breakthrough in detecting water ice in the moon, it will be a goldmine,” said Dr. Annadurai. Such a breakthrough will be a stepping stone to setting up a colony in the moon, he added.
Apart from scientists from the country, eminent space scientists participating in the first meeting will include Paul Spudis, Carle Pieters, Ben Bussey, Stas Barabash, Christian Erd and Manuel Grande.
SARA, Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser, is the first ever such instrument to decipher what the planetary body contains. The data from SARA, Dr. Annadurai said, may also lead to new and interesting findings on the moon.
The scientists participating in the deliberations in Bangalore on January 29 are from organisations such as NASA, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Brown University, Johns Hopkins University and Max Planck Institute.
At the meeting, the findings of each instrument will be discussed by the scientists concerned in order to get a comprehensive picture of the preliminary results of the project, said Dr. Annadurai.